IBM had a problem – they had noise on telephone lines which caused data errors way back in the day. They hired some very interesting people to solve the problem, and this video is quite fascinating – and really fun:

Just for fun, I found and ran a simple Python program that produces a Mandelbrot Set (a Fractal):

Last night we had great 40M polar path DX to Europe. This is a big deal for the West Coast – having lived on the East Coast I can tell you the difference – we took EU DX for granted when I was WA2QHN. In fact, I wasn’t a DXer, but EU was easier to work than Hawaii – I remember KH6 was a treat in NJ – where here at KY6R its like a local.

FT5ZM had the peak of Cycle 24, and its funny – they (3Y0Z) are getting the last gasp uptick before the sun sets on this cycle.

Summer in Orinda can sometimes be 30 degrees warmer than San Francisco, where I work. It’s less than 20 miles away and a pretty short BART ride.

Even just 5 miles away, Oakland and Berkeley can be 20 degrees cooler.

That finger of fog comes in through the Golden Gate bridge and comes in directly toward Berkeley’s Greek Theatre. It then comes over the hill once the SF Bay proper fills up with fog.

This means it will be gray and cloudy and dark in San Francisco and in some parts of the East Bay, but when I get off work and arrive at the Orinda BART platform, I have bright sunlight and cool clean air conditioned air.

I think of all the awards, this one cover of the legendary QST Magazine will always be my favorite. I was completely surprised and taken aback by it. In fact, it was such a big deal for me personally that I did not even plan on going to Dayton (until I was urged to go only weeks before it took place, and I got the “nudge nudge, wink wink). Bob, KK6EK won the Cover Plaque Award to boot. Just amazing.

Another complete surprise is the wonderful ARRL DXCC Yearbook. Its now a PDF only affair – so is not quite as prominent as the 2016 October QST article, but I’m betting the ARRL will keep it on their site as they do QST now.

So, who will be on the cover of this years October QST – DX Edition? I don’t remember any big deal DX-peditions since that first quarter of last year – so it will no doubt be a surprise.

If all goes well with 3Y0Z, I will bet we will see 3Y0Z also in all of the magazines and publications and winning awards by this time next year. Besides being the only interesting DX News this year, they also have an epic project with an epic price tag. That price tag alone is huge DX news . . . .

I will get to “consummate” all of this at Pacificon, where I had given 10 years of presentations that led up to both DXCC Honor Roll and then VK0EK. I have always chronicled my journey in my Antenna Forum Presentations – showing what I did to meet my operating goals as far as antennas were concerned.

Now I move onward and upward to the Maker and Ham World, so it will be nice to use this years presentations as my “gateway” to my next chapter in this wonderful hobby.

Its hard not to wonder where the DXCC program is headed when polar places cost more than $700,000 to activate. Political set backs have proven to work themselves out – in some cases it took 20 years before a place was activated (China and Albania). In some cases it was purely administrative (Navassa), and with Heard Island it was cost and logistics – these are not easy projects to put on.

The NCDXF just awarded 3Y0Z $100,000, which I predicted a long time ago, and they certainly deserve it. The organizers have 10 Top 10 Most Wanted and just as many DX-pedition of the Year awards to boot under their belt – if anyone can get you in their log, they can. Since there is nothing else rare planned in this “DX Year”, I fully expected that they would get such an award.

For the good of the DXCC Program and its future, I sure hope the smaller teams gain traction and get creative, because I believe that this 3Y0Z DX-pedition will represent a big turning point and a bell weather in DX-peditioning. I do not think this cost is going to be sustainable – and I base that on actuarial figures. DX-peditioners and DX-ers are getting older, and from a percentage perspective, far fewer are getting into this aspect of the hobby than leaving. It will always be a supply and demand situation, so that’s what will dictate where this is headed.

Mike, KJ4Z and I share the opinion that we will be headed back to the days of small teams and single world travelers – and that Mega DX-peditions have for the most part seen their best days. I know I welcome that – I really like DX-peditioners like Vlad, UA4WHX, who just shows up and puts many in his log. In fact, Vlad still is the #1 DX-peditioner who has put the most ATNO’s in my log.

20 years ago, part of the reason VK0IR were able to keep costs down (relatively speaking) is because they found available berths for a reasonable price on a scientific ship (The Marion DuFresne). I hope more enterprising DX-peditioners also go back to that sort of planning.

Chuck Brady, N4BQW (SK) activated Bouvet by himself, but that was during a time when a scientist / astronaut had access and the right connections to do so. I worked Chuck for quite a few ATNO’s – especially in the OC-PAC part of the world. Sadly, there are very few left in the ham ranks with that sort of connection, and the current administration is all but wiping out climate science, meaning forget about US teams to piggy back on a US scientific mission – there will be fewer. I predict that if DXCC is going to continue, it will be because countries other than the US jump in and activate the rare one’s – especially the polar ones.

I still wonder who will take the place of those DX-peditioners entering their 70’s, and the Baby Boomers are already there . . . and in fact, the world wide DX Community is made up of mostly Boomers, so all at once the DX Community will drop in numbers over the next 10 – 20 years at a dramatic pace.

What will be the remaining supply, and what will be the remaining demand?

This is a decent book which covers all of the different kinds of commercial – and a few home brewed antenna tuners (couplers). It is a high level book and offers practical explanation of why you might choose one model over another and also whether or not you would use an internal or external or tuner in the shack or out at the antenna.

There are some especially useful pages (for my application):

3-3 shows variations on the LC circuit that I have in the u.RAT, proving while simple, its still a viable antenna coupling circuit – its just not very versatile. If you were to use an LC circuit at the base of a single vertical, the unbalanced LC circuit is all you need – especially if you are setting it up to be a mono band antenna. The u.RAT circuit as it is covers 80, 40 and 30M just fine – but whenever you try to also include 160M, things get a whole lot more interesting . . .

8-3 shows the losses when using different types of coax and also when having the tuner at the antenna or in the shack. Now I’m very happy that I decided to put the BT1500A right at the antenna – it is as low loss as I can get and is a versatile as I can get as far as it being a Low Band antenna coupler. I could not have made better choices